Synopsis
Why do some pregnant American women eat clay? Why do Cornish women blush at the mention of skate? What is the secret of a healthy diet in Papua New Guinea?
Consuming Culture is about why we eat what we eat - and what our eating habits say about us. Original, witty, and provocative, this world tour of food cultures shows how food relates to sex, to the culinary snakes and ladders of meat versus vegetables, and to the often baffling rules of eating etiquette. The first book to investigate the human fascination with food, Consuming Culture explains how food makes friends or enemies of us all and why many societies, including our own, are obsessed with eating what is bad for them.
"Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are," French gastronome Brillat-Savarin declared. To the Aboriginals of Australia it is fried witchetty grubs; to the Bameka of Cameroon it is spiced cat stew. As this pioneering work demonstrates, the use of food in different cultures a round the world is by turns perverse, fascinating, disquieting, and, above all, deeply revealing.
From the psychology of supermarkets to the cuisine of trench warfare, from the diet industry to cannibalism, Consuming Culture gives valuable - and often hilarious - insight into the importance of food in our society. It will be an essential source of reference for life in the 1990s.
Reviews
This sly, rollicking cross-cultural account of eating and "alimentary extremists" may put some readers off their food. MacClancy ( To Kill a Bird with Two Stones ), a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute in Great Britain, has stocked his larder with wittily recorded gastronomic esoterica, manners and foolishness from the British Isles to the Amazon. These include horrific recipes for unspeakable morsels and stories about quixotic faddists such as the "Great Masticator," Horace Fletcher, who advised 32 chews per mouthful. MacClancy proves that all societies have their own definitions of what is and is not edible. Also described here, the Hindu worship of cows, which makes the bovine a taboo food; American squeamishness about germs; the untutored eating habits of feral children; supposed aphrodisiacs; the shifting menus and hours of Western mealtimes and a harrowing report of the Japanese consumption of blow fish (so potentially deadly that eating it is akin to playing Russian Roulette). This altogether entertaining book's message? Eating is wonderful, but people are very silly about it. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A wide-ranging summary, by an Oxford anthropologist, of existing studies and ideas--as well as historical material--on the meaning we find in food and eating. Three of MacClancy's statements convey his far-from-novel message. The first: ``Whatever food you can think of, no matter how disgusting or nasty, the chances are someone, somewhere is eating it.'' The second, in paraphrase: Every culture has its dietary rules, not necessarily dictated by nutrition or the range of available edibles. And the third: ``Our ideas about pollution [and about food in general] are just about as culture bound, and as irrational, as anybody else's.'' These points run through discussions of religious taboos; daily meal-schedules throughout history; aphrodisiacs; famine food; cannibalism; etiquette; eating disorders; the impact of supermarkets; and that dead old horse, British bad taste. MacClancy observes that our range for ethnic restaurants is a limited form of gastronomic tourism--we don't want anything too different--and finds that pica (the eating of clay, laundry starch, etc., during pregnancy) came to America with African slaves. But there are few bright new insights. The author's explanation of why people eat chiles falls flat in comparison with Amal Naj's in last year's Peppers. Perhaps inevitably, MacClancy tends to overgeneralize--on ``the hippies''; ``vegetarians''; ``some people'' as representative of a cultural characteristic--and to reduce prevailing and alternative views to simplistic levels. What, for example, do we make of his comments on the ``significance of secret meals together'' experienced ``when a heterosexual woman embarks on her first lesbian relationship''? And there are other attempts at cuteness: Pregnant women are ``budding mums''; Western culture is alone in its squeamishness about eating ``delicious creepy crawlies''; and ``card-carrying Freudians'' have this or that to say about the association between food and sex. Is this donnish humor? No landmark, then, but the time is ripe for an introductory synthesis, and MacClancy knows, and covers, the territory. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
This lively look at the capriciousness of our food choices and the effect that culture has upon our eating habits and preferences should appeal to anyone interested in food in its wider context. MacClancy (anthropology, St. Anthony's Coll., Oxford) investigates food not as a nutritional substance but as a social, political, and religious element in our lives. Displaying a broad knowledge of both food and culture and revealing a gentle, tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, he discusses taboo foods, vegetarianism, cannibalism, aphrodisiacs, mealtimes, table manners, cravings, fast food, dieting, food faddism, national cuisines, etc., and how they have evolved in different cultures. Through anecdotal accounts of various civilizations, both historical and contemporary, MacClancy clearly demonstrates the impact that culture has on food and concludes that man is not what he eats, but what his society makes him eat.-- Linda Chopra, Cleveland Hts.
University Hts. P. L., Ohio
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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